From a distant, magical land called "The Twin Cities," a Craigslist item of interest:

Afraid the cancellation of Martha Stewart's version of Time Apprentice will leave you with insufficient amounts of the domestic diva in your day? Well, you can worry no more:

• American Press Institute launches $2 million project to figure out the future of newspapers. By all current evidence: Death. [E&P]
• How will Nightline survive post-Koppel? Standards, dammit, says Koppel. [USAT]
• Bob Woodward grew up and turned in his father, metaphorically speaking. [VV]
• Bill Keller has a "serious case of Judy Miller fatigue." Just like everyone else. [Daily Princetonian]
• Media transparency is busting out all over. Yay! [LAT]
• Liberals don't listen to the radio or watch much TV, says NBC chief. And it's for genetic reasons. [B&C]
• Aaron Brown is the king of lunch. Also, he'd take the ABC or CBS jobs, if they were offered. We would, too. [Phil. Inquirer]
• The Judy World Tour continues, last night at George Washington University. [FishbowlDC]
• Peacock to Martha: You're fired! [WP]

In the end, it was Martha Stewart herself who "just didn't fit in," or "needs to leave now," or "sorry, it just isn't working out," or...what was her kiss-off phrase, anyway? If she had just listened to us and used "Bite the doily," she might not have found herself the latest addition to the NBC compost heap:

We don't watch Martha Stewart's Apprentice — hell, virtually no one watches Martha Stewart's Apprentice — but someone who does pointed us to this exchange from last night's episode:

· Our pals at TVGasm have collected some predictably horrifying (but still magical) clips from last night's debut of But Can They Sing? For a sneak preview of the last noise you'll hear when your soul slips out of your body for good, listen to Bai Ling's rendition of "Like a Virgin."
· Maddox Jolie is also an excellent last-minute costume idea, as long as you're willing to live with a mohawk for a couple of weeks.
· So Martha's all, "Fuck the Donald, I'm taking over the whole franchise," but Trump goes, "Hey, low-rated cookie-baking beeyotch, you can bite my doily, I ain't going nowhere." You know, to paraphrase.
· Baldwin, Basinger wage heated battle for control of Ireland.
· Geraldo Rivera owns a DVD of Soul Plane. More shocking: He actually paid for it.

• The blissful union of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline continues to crumble, as the rules of the universe dictate Federline's inability to remain devoted after procreating. [Page Six]
• Meanwhile, has Beyoncé Knowles been talking about carrying Jay-Z's baby? We hope so — a baby Hova would be so gangsta! [Gatecrasher]
• Departed Roc-a-feller Damon Dash still knows how to show his dominance: Instead of drive-bys, he'll just roll up in his luxury sedan and yell at you. It's a whole new level of street cred. [R&M (2nd item)]
• Martha Stewart is putting Turkey Hill, her Westport, CT home, on the market, meaning that Bedford Gray is now all she'll ever need. [Page Six]
• Apple CEO Steve Jobs doesn't like being half-Syrian. But who does, really? [Lowdown]
• Sharon Osbourne speaks of poor old twats other than her husband. [Scoop]
• Will Paris Hilton leave America? PLEASE?!? [Radar]

The rules of media celebrity are fairly simple: You fluff a boldface name, you smack them down, and repeat until said individual's celebrity can no longer withstand another cycle. Martha Stewart is the perfect example, as her post-prison comeback might be fizzling. Her company's shares dropped 16% yesterday and her version of The Apprentice continues to blow. Stewart's magazines are doing well, but not enough to cover other losses.

· Wow, now that you mention it, it kinda does look like Halle Berry has six toes. Once again, Berry establishes an almost unattainable ideal of physical perfection.
· The LAT's Richard Rushfield blogs the Hollywood Film Festival's premiere of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and discovers that no one should ever leave Val Kilmer and Robert Downey, Jr. in front of an audience without adult supervision.
· Trump: Martha Stewart is making my show bite the doily. Guess the salad-tossing experiment isn't working out quite as well as they'd hoped.
· When you get bored of watching Desperate Housewives on that tiny iPod screen, you can always look at naked chicks with lots of tattoos.
· Lindsay Lohan's a busy girl, what with the change of hair color and the 5 ayem trips to 7-11 to sit on the floor and read her bad press. Where does she find the energy?

The Apprentice executive producer Mark Burnett found himself in a quite a pinch. Yes, he'd promised a bored Donald Trump that he'd finally let him experiment with a nontraditional method of dismissing inadequate candidates, but Martha Stewart's struggling series really needed something fresh and daring to make a last-ditch grab for new viewers. Burnett knew in his gut (he'd always followed his gut—always) that Stewart's lackluster catchphrase, "You just don't fit in," would acquire a heightened poignancy if delivered after the homemaker diva vigorously tossed a downsized Apprentice's salad, an exciting, filthy version of Michael Corleone's kiss of doomed Fredo. The Donald would have to settle for a special two-hour "rusty trombone" edition of his show during sweeps. He'd understand; Burnett and Trump, savvy businessmen both, know that the keys to success are compromise and teamwork.

Yes, we know the ratings are bad, and, yes, we know Jeff Zucker's job is sort of on the line. But, still, this seems a bit much:

We were only vaguely aware that ex-con domestic goddess Martha Stewart had another show besides her soon-to-be-canceled Apprentice spinoff, but a reader recaps an instant classic TV moment from yesterday's Martha:

According to Broadcasting & Cable, Tyra Banks has grabbed a fistful of Martha Stewart's blonde hair and told the ex-con lifestyle empress to get her gang of ass-kissing honkies off her Wednesday night turf. (Well, not in so many words.) Says B&C:

It's redhead day on Martha, with an entire audience of natural redheads and flame-tressed guests Conan O'Brien and Mario Batali. Cute, right? Not so much. What makes this particularly horrifying is Martha Stewart's personal embrace of the theme, by clearly donning an auburn-tinted merkin on her head.

Things we don't understand, no. 427:

We sampled the debut of Martha Stewart's version of The Apprentice last night, and it seems like she's a little bit unclear on the concept. After she dismissed the first hopeful with that terribly ineffectual catchphrase, "You just don't fit in," she's heard in voice-over—and then pictured—writing the unwanted candidate a letter on beautiful stationery. It's all way too toothless and civilized. On the new season of Trump's show, the castoffs are dipped in barbecue sauce and locked in the back of the limo with a dozen rabid weasels while the cameras roll. The trying-too-hard-to-be-nice Martha Stewart stops just short of naming a shade of paint after each week's loser. It's like she had all the icy bitch poncho'd out of her in prison.

• Kate Moss' well-documented coke binge last week doesn't compare to that one time she blew through a fist-sized mound of cocaine with fellow catwalker Naomi Campbell, or when she demanded several hundred British pounds' worth of coke just to attend an event with Nelson Mandela, or that three-way incident with Jude Law and his then-wife, Sadie Frost. [R&M]
• The pre-Emmy party at the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel was a tweenie showdown, with Nicole Richie and Mischa Barton holding court on one side of the pool and Paris Hilton, Mary-Kate Olsen, and Lindsay Lohan on the other. Lohan, being friendly with both "teams," spent most of her time running back and forth. Then Hilary Duff took everyone's lunch money. [Page Six]
• On her last night as a free woman, newly-imprisoned rapper Lil' Kim enjoyed a tearful dinner at Mr. Chow and dancing at PM. All in Gucci, and all for the cameras. [Lowdown (2nd item)]
• When Mayor Bloomberg kisses a woman, it's "all teeth, no tongue." Remember that come November. [Page Six]
• Will Martha Stewart take off her chinchilla just long enough to shill for PETA? [Scoop]

We were so busy practicing our new hip-hop vocabulary (note to self: "cheddar" is not cheese) that we had to catch up with the rest of Martha on TiVo. We shouldn't have watched it at all, because it broke our little hearts: We were promised Martha rapping, and we were promised Diddy wrapping. Neither was delivered.

We nearly forgot today is rap day on Martha. Fortunately, we turned our TV on in the nick of time.

• Martha Stewart to launch fashion mag. Oh, the endless opportunities for orange-jumpsuit jokes. [NYP]
• New Orleanian Doug Brinkley, who made his pundit name on his pal JFK Jr.'s death, unsurprisingly signs first Katrina book deal. [MSNBC]
• Hearst and Hachette — gasp! — work together on an ad deal. [NYT]
• What's new about the new Paris Review? Um, what isn't? [NYO]
• Michael Kinsley leaves LAT editorial page after a little more than a year; no one was considerate enough to leave news of his firing in a Xerox machine so he could learn about it in advance. [NYT]
• Wenner Media redecorates, and Jann isn't happy with the paint colors. [NYO, second item]
• NYT, WP give each other sneak peaks of their front pages. Sputters E&P's scoopy Joe Strupp: "Are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? They'll see everything, they'll — they'll see the Big Board!" [E&P]
• ASME barely slaps The New Yorker on the wrist for Target single-advertiser issue, and crazy columnist in Chicago bursts a blood vessel. [CS-T]
• The lowest blow: In wake of Katrina, public dislikes Bush more than it dislikes press. [E&P]